The Inception Problem
by C.O. Rosette
Summary: Set after "Soul-fraying Games" from the spinoff "Paradox Space." The trauma of the past has left Dave with many sleepless nights. When it gets so bad that it begins to affect his health, the meteor crew must look deep into his psyche if they want any chance of saving him, and find out more about themselves. May make it an Inception x-over. The thumbnail is from ashdenej on tumblr.
1. Chapter 1

"So what does everyone want on their pizza?" Dave asks the group of four as his sister, he, his best bro Karkat, and his sister's matesprit Kanaya all walk down the dark passageway to the Veil's supposed "kitchen" with a somewhat eager bounce to their footing.

"Vegetables," Rose remarks simply. "Or whatever Kanaya wants. I won't be swayed to sway myself."

"Hmm," Kanaya licks her lips and looks thoughtful. "Now that you mention it, human pepperoni would seem most pleasurable at the current time. Oh, and also with grub sauce, both the regular kind and the extra red." It's strange for anyone but Rose to see Kanaya's rainbow drinker tendencies flare up over pizza.

"Well I want supreme, all alternian-style, puss-covered roundbread," Karkat declares just as snidely as he claimed his Dane Cook movie.

"Not that anyone would agree to any disgusting, crap stack that you'd pick, but the shit you say to describe it just makes us all rather vomit than eat anything you want," Dave tells him, his face tinged green at Karkat's explicit vocabulary. "I'll bet half the adjectives you use aren't even real, alternian terms."

"How would you know what are and aren't 'real, alternian terms,' jackass?" Karkat rebukes. "You're too uncultured to even know half of what they say on earth! You just need an excuse to complain, so instead you complain about other peoples' opinions. I have no idea why Terezi labels me as the bitchy and whiny one. You bitch and whine a lot more about shit that isn't even on your business plate!"

"See right there?" Dave points out. "How is the term 'business plate' even be a thing that exists? Face it, dude. No one is going to want the pizza you suggest no matter how cool a Dane Cook movie you pick."

"What category of 'puss-covered roundbread' do you prefer, Dave?" Kanaya inquires.

"I'm down with whatever," Dave replies. "I do dig those pineapple pizzas. I hope we have enough ingredients for the pineapple category."

Finally the four reach the opening in the kitchen after passing several freakishly eerie, air vents in the dark hallway. "Well, here we are," Rose announces.

"Cool," Dave comments as they all walk into the dimly-lit, alchemy room. "I'm in charge of makin' the 'grub.' Heh. (Get it?) Kanaya, wanna help me?"

Kanaya glances at Rose for a brief moment before following Dave to the worn out, barely-colored in all the trolls' blood alchemitter, "I don't see why otherwise."

"Fucking great," Karkat states. "Well if Dave gets to pick what pizza we all have, then I get to be in charge of picking out what movie we watch!"

"I don't know about you two, but I have certainly had enough of this Dane Cook absurdity," Rose chases after Karkat as he hightails it to his movie library.

"It seems Karkat made an error in his statement that we'd have to look through all of his library in order to find something without Dane Cook in it," Rose smugly claims as she walks back into the kitchen with a sulking and grumbling Karkat trudging behind her. "I slaved away throughout the whole room to find a single film missing one Dane Cook. I didn't even have to search all of the library in order to find it. I found it in the final most grotesque cupboard in front of the very last Dane Cook movie." She triumphantly waves the blue-ray pack of some sort of action flick around in the air. From where Dave and Kanaya stand, they can make out the shapes of abnormally-angled buildings and people standing around, looking confused.

Kanaya walks up to Rose and curiously takes the blue-ray from her hand, studying it closely, "What is…'Inception?'"

"Oh, Inception?" Dave clarifies as he brings the first pizza to the wooden table brought in from the informatory library. "That's that movie that was hells of famous on earth and won all those awards. Critics put that shit up on a pedestal because of how deep they thought it is. Really it's about as deep as the pitch black as fuck depths of this flying, gravel piece we're on."

"Well," Rose begins, taking the blue-ray box back from Kanaya, her hand affectionately brushing the emerald troll's in the process. "As much as critically-acclaimed films can be oversaturated by the public eye, this one still does delve deep into the psychoanalysis of the mind, especially in how it perceives dreams. Seeing as we travel through dreams all the time, this would be an enjoyable storyline for us to compare with our own experiences. I say we watch this one." Her eyes flick to Kanaya in a silent confirm of permission.

"Seeing as I'm not the best-versed in human, visual entertainment, I'll have to trust you two," Kanaya shrugs.

Rose looks to Dave, "How about you, Dave?"

Dave nods, "Alright. I'm cool with it. Seen it loads of times before. That don't mean I can't deconstruct the shit out of it with my supreme deconstruction skills. Anyway, we don't even need consent from Karkat in order to pick what we wanna watch so we can get this party started already. We all know he's going to choose the same fecal piece of overdone trash he always does."

"HEY! I HEARD THAT, ASSHOLE!" Karkat screams from across the room. "Or did you forget I'm right here?"

"I was making my best attempt not to touch on the subject," Kanaya speaks up. "But I believe that Dave is correct in this assumption. My apologies, Karkat, but I think that I speak for each individual aside from you procuring to the current subject when I declare we have grown weary of your monotonous onslaught of snuff films and wish they would just throw themselves in the waste disposal chute. Wow. That felt good."

Kanaya's short rant milks a forced and sober chuckle out of Dave and a small smirk out of her girlfriend. She reached in and snatched the words right out of Rose's mouth, "It's settled then. Inception it is." The group proceeds to set up the blue-ray player and prepare Dave and Kanaya's grub-covered, pineapple pizzas. Karkat continues to grumble about the poor tastes of all his friends throughout the whole movie.


	2. Chapter 2

After the end of the movie, the group sits at the couch for another two or so hours, discussing the dynamics of the film and what it means. After a while, the conversation soon dissolves into various, unorthodox topics, such as whether or not troll Leonardo DiCaprio can fit one-hundred blue, cotton balls in his mouth, or if one will be able to find their backside if they inexplicably lost all their senses and turned into bird-dogs. When the time finally comes, they can't exactly tell what is "the time" as it has not much bearing on a meteor floating through not-space unless your name is Dave Strider. Finally they all decide to hit the recuperasack, or at least go about their separate ways and call it a "night." Kanaya and Rose snatch a few other movies they collected from the film library and say their goodnight. They tell the boys that they'll keep an eye out for Terezi and the mayor before they leave for their shared block, hand in hand.

After they leave, Dave slowly and wearily gets up from the old, dusty, brown couch. God knows how long the Veil has even had that couch. Dave stands a bit unsteadily at first. His even-more-pale-than-usual forehead throbs with untold exhaustion. He should probably get to bed soon. Karkat stays put, still slumped in the couch, his black sleeves crossed in a childish pout as they were at the beginning of the movie. It takes Dave a moment to remember that he's still there, "Where are you going, Karkat?"

"I was just going to pop a few Dane Cook flicks into the disc spinner in case anyone wants to join me. Do you want to accompany me as I delve into the ranks of Dane Cookiness, an opportunity we were disgracefully denied when we instead watched one of your sister's lame, thought-provoking, visual, spin plates? Though I do admit, it did provoke some debate within my mind, mostly of how much I don't want to go to sleep anytime soon."

Dave doesn't even attempt to stretch, "Naw. I'm not feeling so well. I think I'm just gonna go to sleep."

"Um, okay," Karkat responds. He waits for his friend to leave, watching him with a blank expression before slightly raising an eyebrow after he's left the room. After Dave is gone, his dark red cape dragging uncharacteristically behind him, Karkat places Good Luck Chuck in the blue-ray and begins to watch.

Dave walks onto the transportalizer, his feet dragging slightly. He feels exhausted and dizzy as it sends him to a room full of twelve more transportalizers. He plods ahead to the far right of the room and large circle that each round transportalizer forms. He stops atop the one marked with a mustard yellow Gemini floating above it and waits for it to take him away. Ever since he recently broke up with Terezi, she began doing nasty, hateful activities with the clown troll. No longer wanting to be around when that happens, Dave took up residence in Sollux's old respiteblock. Terezi always says that he reminds her of him.

He stumbles off of the cement platform after being teleported a second time. His stomach feels slightly uneven after the motion and all that pizza. The recuperacoon in the back has been molded into a half-cocoon, half-bed. It now sort of looks like one of those racecar beds for little kids, except a heterochromatic bee instead of a racecar. Dave shuffles through the rectangular-shaped block past the row of several different computers- each for a special purpose- and a collection of turntables plus and few smuppets of assorted colors, and throws himself onto the bed by the bee's antenna, his legs hanging off the edge and touching the ground. He alchemized the bed sheets to be maroon-colored with every playing, card symbol reprinted all over it, much like his old one on earth. Because of the recent, quadrant drama that's been going on (Karkat's attempt to recreate another multi-quadrant, shipping grid and Terezi trying to be in a black relationship with Gamzee while still in a red one with him), the sight of the symbols only make Dave's urge to vomit all the more strong.

Dave alchemized every item in his room that was of his interests. They keep him occupied in the span of the three years on this boring, colorless meteor. Especially since Rose, Kanaya, and Terezi all got involved in committed relationships, he needs something to pass the time other than hanging around Can Town.

Dave lets out an uncontrollable sigh that he's been holding in for basically the whole twenty-four hours he's been around the others. Finally all alone, he can take off his shades. They shades hide the dark and heavy bags that have surrounded his eyes for at least a week now. He folds his shades back and hangs them from the bee's left antenna. He lets his arm fall back down onto the softness of his mattress. His breathing begins to even out from it's initial, shallow pace and he closes his eyes. Thoughtless shapes and colors begin fill his mind with past events.

Suddenly, he jolts awake, prying open his eyes and sitting up over the edge of the bee bed. He was about to fall asleep. That's not a good thing. Sleep is not a good thing anymore. Not since the earlier destruction. Ever since he stood atop the highest, vertical point of what's left of the Veil and gazed upon the giant crack in reality, it's been messing with his head and dreams. That and a few of the worries that have still stuck with him in recent happenings, particularly during the crew's meeting with Aranea and Meenah. Some nights when he has nothing to do, the bad memories begin to fill his mind until they're all he can think about. That's one of the reasons he needs to find distactions.

Dave's head begins to swim. He can barely keep his eyes open. He grabs his shades again and shoves them sloppily on his face. Then he stumbles toward the alchemy lab again to make himself some coffee as best he can in the state he is in, desperately hoping that Karkat isn't still there.


	3. Chapter 3

It doesn't take very long for the others on the meteor to catch on that something strange is going on, especially given the psychic rumpus the four of them went through the other night, tearing their brains out trying to figure out which interpretation of the film's ending is the most cannon. Now it seems, all those four can think about are dreams, whether they've been on their minds before seeing the movie, or if they're still attempting desperately to wrap their brain around it's philosophies. One thing is for sure, everything Rose, Dave, Karkat, and Kanaya encounter after their viewing of Inception, somehow always traces back to what they see as they sleep.

This much is definitely true for Kanaya when she encounters Dave for the first time since they saw Inception. It happens to be back in the alchemy room. Other than Can Town, that's normally where all inhabitants of the meteor who aren't dating each other see each other. It may just be her rainbow, drinker, super senses, but Kanaya notices something off about her girlfriend's brother the moment she spots him swaying slightly by the table of many alchemitters. Rose, for once, isn't in the room with her. She's decided to take a break from her human companion while she sorts out her drinking problems. By "break" she means waiting in the other room for a few hours while Rose cleans up the mess of broken bottles and ruined bed sheets she made when she foolishly got herself drunk again.

Smelling that someone is already in the room before she enters, Kanaya hesitantly enters through the scarcely-used door to the alchemy room. She notices that it's just her girlfriend's brother. Nothing too bad, right? He's pretty chill. Honestly, Kanaya likes to think that she's pretty confident about everyone currently traveling with her on the meteor, even Gamzee. If any of them ever step out of line, she can always rely on her trusty chainsaw. Unfortunately, Rose, Karkat, and the others seem intent on keeping her from using it on Gamzee. Although she still has her suspicions, he hasn't murdered anyone since the human arrived, and Kanaya certainly does not want to lower herself to past Gamzee's level. She makes a note to let the lipstick she was holding on so tightly to drop into her dress pocket. Dave doesn't even seem to notice her. He just keeps his unusually damp, blond bangs over his shades in an attempt to hide what is already hidden. His head slumps down exhaustedly as he leans over one of the alchemitters. The bottom of his cape is torn and a darker red than the rest as if it was recently being dragged around because Dave did not have the energy to hold it upright.

After silently sneaking through a cracked door, Kanaya lets her presence be known by politely clearing her throat. Immediately, Dave jolts up, as if a bolt of electricity has just shocked him back to life. He looks at Kanaya and for a split second, she wonders if that is a streak of fear in his shaded eyes. Unfortunately, the expression is gone as soon as it appears and Kanaya is left without a conversation starter to this awkward encounter. "Um..," she starts a bit awkwardly. "Excuse me, Dave, but have you been here all this time and never told anyone?"

It takes a while for Dave to answer her, or even acknowledge that she spoke, "I was just getting some coffee. Nothing to worry about here. Did Rose ask, by the way?"

"Um, well no," Kanaya shakes her head hesitantly.

"Was it Karkat or Terezi?" he asks immediately after her delayed response.

"It was not really any of them individually," Kanaya says, not meeting his eyes. "Rose and I just noted that we had not seen you in quite a while. Then she asked me to get her some coffee. Now I see you, and that's why I would like to inquire if you are feeling unwell, because it sure looks that way to me."

Dave's expression underneath his shades changes so suddenly that Kanaya feels as if she missed it with a blink. He looks to the left and then to the right nervously. Then he does something Kanaya never would expect him to do. He puts a shaking hand on her shoulder and looks her straight in the moss-colored eyes. Kanaya can tell his irises meet hers, "Listen. Don't tell anyone, but I can't sleep."

"What do you mean?" Kanaya raises an eyebrow, confused. "We are traveling through dream bubbles, Dave. We sleep whenever we get the chance."

Dave shakes his head, "Not me. I don't know why, but my out-of-dream-bubble experiences get more and more frequent. The only memories I see in my dreams are of my bro, both the live and dead one. And that is only when I use Rose's alchemized, sleeping pills to knock myself out."

"So that's where Rose's last few pills went…"

"Most nights, I can't sleep. Other nights, I don't want to sleep. If I do, it will be the same damn dreams unless our space rock flies into a memory bubble in the middle of my inequated naptime. But I can't function without fuel, so I come here for coffee. But I start to feel like shit when I don't get enough sleep, and my brain starts turning the ill beats up to one-ten, and even though the beats are ill as fuck, that doesn't change the fact that it just keeps happening. It keeps happening and I don't know why…" Kanaya stands frozen for the better half of a minute. Dave takes his hands off of Kanaya's shoulders finally. "I thought I'd finally tell you. You are a healer, aren't you? Please. I feel like I'm slipping…" With that, Dave begins to fall forward. Kanaya snaps out of her internal panic instantly and moves to catch his stumbling body. As his weight falls upon hers, she begins to formulate a plan that will answer the group's questions about dreams once and for all.


End file.
